The Brickhouse

This new restaurant-cum-supper club, spread over three floors with red-suede booths & visuals projected onto the gallery-style white walls, taps in to the current trend for cabaret/burlesque. Though whether the show (on our visit a girl in S&M leather gyrating with a whip, followed by a camp singer) makes a fitting divertissement for the finely calibrated modern European cooking is debatable. A starter of rare tuna comes with deftly weighted wasabi foam, a crisp ginger wafer & a soy reduction in artful swirls. Mains include plump roast scallops with bacon lardons, pickled baby onion, & parmesan mashed potatoes, while pave of beef with confit parsnips topped with a grain mustard ice-cream is a diverting mix of textures & temperatures. It’s sophisticated but accessible cooking that shows obvious ambition, with more playful crossover coming at dessert – warm Eccles cake & Stilton ice-cream & cappuccino creme brulee with delicately flavoured lemon thyme shortbread, say. Sadly the cabaret feels half-cocked in comparison. The Kit Kat Klub it ain’t, but the kitchen’s performance certainly deserves applause.